A New Zealand Problem, Or Two

This week, to write what I've agreed to write, I’ve had to come back to New Zealand gender statistics, after eighteen months of learning from countries’ figures, most of them supplied by others – France, Sweden, the United States (including films by women from around the world shown at festivals there), Australia and Canada.

New Zealand has such a small population that – with help – I’ve been able to identify most features made and written and/or directed by New Zealanders, 2003-2014. Co-productions funded by the taxpayer-funded New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) are also included, because I want to be able to track the NZFC's overall investment in women writers and directors.

Most on the list have been released in cinemas or shown on television. But some have been offered taxpayer production funding and are somewhere in the process between early pre-production and post-production. They are undated.

The list excludes feature documentaries but includes a group of hybrid works – Home By Christmas, Rain of the Children, Love Story, The Red House, Beyond the Edge, Giselle, The Deadly Ponies Gang.

I don't include features that New Zealand women writers and directors filmed overseas and New Zealand taxpayers didn't fund at all, like Niki Caro’s North Country and now McFarland, USA, Christine Jeff’s Sunshine Cleaning and Miro Bilbrough’s Being Venice. And some New Zealand women directors aren’t represented on this list of features– Jane Campion, who recently came home to make a teleseries Top of the Lake, Alison Maclean who will return to Christchurch to shoot her adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal, which she’s writing with Emily Perkins, as well as Christine Jeffs and Miro Bilbrough.

Please let me know of any additions and if you’d like your information amended.

Abbreviations–

TF: Taxpayer Funded – for development and/or production and/or post-production, by the New Zealand Film Commission, New Zealand On Air (NZOA), Creative New Zealand or other central government or local body film scheme. NZFC features are usually also NZOA funded.

TM: Telemovie

TFCP: Taxpayer funded international co-production

*: written &/or directed by men, with a female protagonist

This list shows that we have a gender problem (or two). A related post, inspired by an unexpected email, will come soon and consider a couple of possible new solutions (Women Directors. Globally., now here, though I'm not sure about the 'solutions'.)

I know that this is harder to quantify - but in my experience, with shorts anyway (which are indeed a driver and talent development area for NZ features) - one of the main problems that you'd be extremely lucky to get 20% of projects in any submission round from women.

This makes it very hard to have a balance. If it was 50/50 things would be more even. Hard to quantify I know. But it has been going on for many years now.

Hi Anonymous! Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure where you got your information. Here are the figures for the last two years NZFC Fresh Shorts programmes, vis Lisa Chatfield who runs the programmes. Big thanks to her!

2012Fresh 10 Directors: 47 out of 151 were women (31%) Fresh 30 Directors: 29 out of 119 were women (24%)

= 28% of total applications (270) had women directors attached

5 out of 16 green-lit directors were women (31.25%)

2011Fresh 10 Directors 48 out of 159 were women (30%) Fresh 30 Directors 31 out of 132 were women (23%)

= 27% of total applications (291) had women directors attached.

But in contrast to 2012, in 2011 four out of the eight successful applications to each programme had women directors attached: 50%

I'm not sure what these figures mean. These proportions of applications with women directors attached are very similar to gender proportions of applicants for early development funding in the past. (See sidebar for my Development thesis (2010) and PhD Report for People Who've Helped Me (2008).) It's also almost identical to the proportion of women who applied for the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships this year, which interests me because I'm keeping an eye on international comparisons.

I know that the NZFC’s 'Review of NZFC Short Film Strategy' (2007) showed that in the decade up to 2007 women directed 37 percent of the total NZFC-funded short films, but does not provide statistics re directors attached to applications. And I'm interested that the women-directed shorts were then 42 percent of all NZFC-funded shorts accepted for ‘A’ list film festivals; and as individuals women were significantly more likely to make an ‘A’ list film – 60 percent of women-directed short films were accepted for an ‘A’ list festival, but only 48 percent of those that men directed. Has that changed?

I also know that the feature statistics for that period and the following years showed that the short film 'pathway' to feature filmmaking did not work as well for women as for men, in spite of this 'A' list success. (I don’t know whether women from other countries use short films as stepping-stones to features more or less successfully than New Zealanders.)

Why is the proportion of applications with women directors attached so similar in both years? Why don't more women apply? Why were more women directors attached to Fresh 10 applications in both years than to Fresh 30 applications? Is this an illustration of women being less ambitious than men? Or of their producers being less ambitious for women? Why did women directors do so much better in 2011 than in 2012? Why has the proportion of NZFC-funded women directors of short films decreased since 2007? Why does the short film 'pathway' not work well for women? Any answers or theories very very welcome!

No, she hasn't, though the 2012 short list stats are here (towards the end): http://wellywoodwoman.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/after-i-completed-my-survey-of-new.html. I haven't asked for the Premiere Shorts applications stats because applications go – as you probably know – to producer groups outside the NZFC and as far as I know they are not required to furnish statistical information about gender. But I'll email Lisa now and ask!

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About Me

I'm Marian Evans. This blog continues 'Development', my post-doctoral project, and supports women who make movies, in all forms, for any platform. Globally, starting in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 1893, women here were first in the world to get the vote and I'll be celebrating that in 2018, with #DirectedByWomen Suffrage125.